2050 - Are we still here?
Predicting the future in 1992 when I began this work was relatively easy. There was ample science to tell us that if urgent steps to reduce the use of fossil fuels were not immediately implemented a rapidly warming world of heatwaves, storms and wildfires would threaten our security. We now know those predictions were correct because they’ve all come about by 2026 with the prospect of being worse by 2030.
They were easy predictions to make because of the science, but also because a threat to security is not the same as a threat to the very existence of the global order and civilisation we take for granted.
Is the end really nigh?
Is it nigh for all of us, or just those lacking the wealth to adapt or having the misfortune to be living in the wrong location at the wrong time?
And if it is nigh, will it be brought about by AI before the climate brings it about?
The problem with doom-saying is that it doesn't motivate action whilst people have been doom saying for centuries and they have usually been wrong.
But not always. Civilisations have collapsed. What is different this time is that it is the whole of humanity and for that, there is no precedent.
What shall we tell the children?
As an educator, I am supposed to be able to suggest answers to this question. Perhaps our starting point needs to be with creating a generation that thinks differently:
The “pre-change” climate of my own generation’s childhood (the world of David Attenborough if you like) is not where we start. To the present generation of children, the books and films that portray it are history.
Language such as “another record broken” is problematic. There is no “new normal” in the sense that the climate has changed. What is normal for these children is constant change.
Whatever we say, we must help them come to terms with being the generation that is living with sometimes frightening change as normal but working towards a new, more stable world for their own children.
